Listening Booth: Frankie Rose and More

The singer and multi-instrumentalist Frankie Rose founded the gritty fuzz popsters the Vivian Girls, drummed and sang for the Crystal Stilts and the Dum Dum Girls, before moving on to release her own material. Her second solo record, “Interstellar,” largely dispenses with the lo-fi attack of her past, and replaces it with a shiny new-wave approach. Think of it as next wave. Listen to “Know Me”:

The iconic Irish group The Chieftains celebrates its fiftieth anniversary by doing what it’s know for, reaching beyond its immediate circle to spread the traditional music of its homeland to farther shores. The group’s new album, “Voice of Ages,” was produced by T Bone Burnett, and it features a slew of guest musicians, including Bon Iver, the Decemberists, the Punch Brothers, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Civil Wars, the Pistol Annies, and many others. The result is a forward-looking set that builds on decades of experience. Listen to “Pretty Little Girl”:

The singer, songwriter, and author Tommy Womack, a fixture on the Nashville music scene, mixes country, blues, and rock like a fast-fingered bartender on his new album, “Now What!,” a follow up to his 2007 release, “There, I said It!” His broad approach isn’t a surprise, given his background: his first band was a post-punk outfit called Government Cheese, which had a decent run on the college charts in the late eighties, and he also leads a Clash tribute band called Tommy Gunn. The heart of “Now What!” is its subject matter: instead of typical roadhouse hell-raising fare, it addresses middle age. He wrote one song about washing the dishes in his kitchen, and another expresses his regret about spending so much of his life stoned. But the album’s not a downer—Womack never takes himself, or anything else, too seriously, and he’s is not above rapping on one track and quoting Cheap Trick on another. Listen to “I’m Too Old to Feel That Way Right Now”:

Claire Boucher is a twenty-three-year-old producer and singer from Montreal who records as Grimes. She sings in a delicate falsetto and she uses electronic effects to twist her voice into the sonic equivalent of a slip dress in the wind. She delivers her astral dance music with synthesizers and drum machines, and it evokes something that would have been played at a high-school dance in the mid-eighties. Of course, that was before she was born, so we’re talking about some imaginative stuff here. Listen to “Genesis”:

Farmer Nappy (a.k.a. Darryl Henry), a veteran of the soca-music scene, releases his second solo album of blistering dance music, “You Make Me… Surrender,” on Feb. 21, otherwise known as Fat Tuesday in New Orleans, and Carnival Day in much of the rest of the world, including in his native Trinidad, where he’s in the midst of playing more than thirty shows this month. If you don’t know your kaiso from your ragga, or your soca from your calypso, don’t be concerned. Farmer Nappy hits them all, along with a bit of reggae and dancehall. “I take a little vacation to ease my frustration,” he raps on the pulse-raising “I Pay for This,” and this collection will take you to sunnier climes pretty quickly. Listen to “Surrender”:

Jim White, a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and artist who grew up in Pensacola, Florida, and now lives in Athens, Georgia, released his début record, “The Mysterious Tale of How I Shouted Wrong-Eyed Jesus!,” in 1997. Since then, he has recorded a series of Southern Gothic influenced albums for David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label chronicling life among people on the margins of society. He left Luaka Bop for his latest release, “Where it Hits You,” which he financed himself using Kickstarter (offering, for a four-thousand dollar contribution, to “come to your house, rake your yard and mow your lawn (or some corollary menial labor), then do a private house concert for you and your invited guests”; there were no takers for that one). It’s an intensely personal collection of songs—his wife left him in the middle of recording the album—and for White that also means that it’s an exuberant combination of far-reaching sounds, what he has called “a crazy quilt of musical influences.” Listen to “Infinite Mind.”

Photograph of Frankie Rose by Jordi Vidal/Redferns.

John Donohue, an artist based in Brooklyn, is the editor of the anthology “Man with a Pan: Culinary Adventures of Fathers Who Cook for Their Families.”